Two Tall Tails (5 page)

Maggie was waiting at the store, and Owen looked adoringly at her when she thanked him for coming to her rescue. She unlocked the door and we went inside. I saw her hesitate and look around.

I set Owen down. “Go for it,” I whispered.

He immediately began to nose around. Beside me Maggie sucked in a breath as Owen began to sniff around the shelving unit that still held some of the woven placemats. Then he suddenly headed purposefully for the back door, meowing loudly a couple of times.

“I think we're supposed to go after him,” she said.

“Do you want to wait here?” I asked. “I can go.”

She shook her head. “No, but if Owen catches anything, I
will
be in the back of your truck—or standing on the roof of the cab.”

“Got it,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders and giving her what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

Owen was sitting in front of the back door that led to the alley. He gave another insistent meow when we joined him.

Maggie opened the door. “Where are we going?” she asked as though she expected him to answer.

Owen led us down the narrow alley to a green metal Dumpster pushed up against the wall of the building, a pile of wooden pallets stacked beside it. He stopped, looked up at me and made a low murping sound.

I peered around the side of the metal bin. “Mags,” I said softly. In the cramped space between the garbage container and the pallets, a mama cat had made a home for three tiny kittens from a couple of scarves and some placemats.

“I think we've found your ‘cat burglar,'” I said.

Maggie crouched down and began to talk quietly to the mother cat. I pulled out my phone to call Roma, who was a vet and would know what to do about moving the mother and her babies. I glanced down at Owen, who looked up at me with a decidedly self-satisfied expression on his furry face, and I had the niggling feeling that somehow he'd figured this whole thing out long before we had.

A Second Chance Cat Story

Sofie Ryan

“Good things are coming your way, Sarah,” Tom Harris said as we watched my cat, Elvis, make his way across Tom's yard and into mine.

“Aren't black cats supposed to be
bad
luck?” I asked.

I smiled at Tom because I'm not really superstitious, although I'd certainly heard about a variety of superstitions and omens from my grandmothers' friends over the years: everything from spitting on a new bat before using it for the first time—which struck me as being really unsanitary—to standing at a crossroads and reciting a little rhyme to get rid of a sty (trust me, that one doesn't work).

“Where I come from, a black cat arriving at your house brings prosperity with it.” Tom smiled back at me, and his soft Scottish burr seemed just a little more pronounced. He'd been in Maine for more than fifty years, but he'd never completely lost his accent.

I squinted at Elvis, heading purposefully from Tom's property, skirting the trees and the rock wall at the back. My 1860s Victorian was only a few blocks from North Harbor's waterfront. The neighborhood, with its big trees and old houses, had felt like home from the first time I'd turned onto the street. The house had been turned into three apartments about thirty years ago, and it had been let go over time, but my dad had agreed with my assessment that it had good bones and after a lot of work it had turned into the home I'd hoped it would be.

Beside me, Rose Jackson nudged me with her elbow. “I don't think that's prosperity that Elvis has in his mouth,” she said. “It looks more like a field mouse or a vole to me.”

Rose was one of my grandmother's friends. Barely five feet tall with short white hair and kind gray eyes, she also lived in one of the apartments in the house and worked for me at my repurpose shop, Second Chance. In theory, living so close together shouldn't have worked, but it did. We gave each other lots of space—in truth, Rose had way more of a social life than I did. And she was even having some success in teaching me how to cook, something no one else had been able to do.

Tom took a step forward and craned his neck to get a better look at the cat. He was a small, round man, no taller than five eight or so, with thick iron gray hair and small black frame glasses.

“I think you're right,” he said. “And while I generally like to take a ‘live and let live' approach to other creatures, if that happens to be the vole that made several meals of my hyacinth bulbs, I can't say I'm sorry.”

Rose nudged me again. “Stop scratching,” she said softly, a warning edge in her voice.

She'd seen me trying to wedge a finger under the splint on my left arm. I'd dropped a cardboard box full of old elementary school readers on that arm, injuring a tendon in the palm of my hand a couple of weeks earlier. I had to wear the plastic and neoprene splint for another two weeks and it was driving me crazy. It itched. A lot. Rose had already caught me trying to jam my toothbrush underneath the splint to get some relief. She'd confiscated the toothbrush and I'd gotten a stern speech about mouth germs, skin infections and the four stitches at the base of my thumb. Then she'd given me a bowl of warm rhubarb crisp as a distraction from the itching.

I made a face at her now and she made one right back at me before gently squeezing my arm.

I tucked a strand of hair that had slipped free from my ponytail behind my ear and looked over at Tom's yard, trying to shift my attention away from the sensation that ants were marching in formation up my wrist. Tom's lawn was probably the most perfectly manicured one in North Harbor, Maine. Maybe even in the entire state. No weeds dared poke their heads up in the two planters that flanked the front door and ran the length of the house on either side. Tom had replaced the bulbs that had been eaten by the voles with little clay pots of daffodils and paper whites and today had started replacing those with white and pink geraniums.

The grass around his small, gray-shingled story-and-a-half house was mowed to a length of precisely an inch and three-quarters, which Tom deemed the correct height for that particular type of grass. The only incongruity was the small strip of lawn that separated his driveway from the yard of his neighbor, Angie Bates. There the grass had been sheared so short in places there was nothing but bare earth.

Tom followed my gaze. “How can that miscreant be Angie's family?” he asked.

I didn't think he really wanted an answer to the question. “He'll be leaving soon, and Angie will be home,” I said.

The old man gave a snort of derision, and the color rose in his face. “I'm not convinced that ne'er-do-well is even employed. He's extremely evasive. Even Angie wasn't clear on what he does for a living, assuming he does anything.” He looked toward the small white Cape Cod–style house on the other side of the choppy strip of grass.

Angie—Angelica Bates—was an anthropologist who taught part-time in the Environmental Education Department at Unity College. The “he” Tom was speaking so derisively about was her nephew, Jason. Angie had no children. She was a bit of a free spirit with a wild mass of long blond curls streaked with gray and her dark-framed glasses always slipping down her nose. When she wasn't teaching, she was off somewhere in the world on a dig site. I'd taken two classes from Angie in college and was happy to find a familiar face on the street when I'd finally moved in. Every few months we'd get together and she'd regale me with stories about her travels.

Jason was the son of Angie's older brother. “It's taking him a bit of time to find himself,” she'd confided recently to Rose and me over tea and biscotti. I'd nodded and said nothing, looking pointedly at Rose as a hint to do the same. Rose had reached for her cup and kept her opinions to herself, although later when Angie had gone home, she'd tartly commented that it might be a little easier for Jason to find his missing “self” if he got out of bed before noon.

“Angie will be out of the hospital in a few days,” Rose said then, laying a hand on Tom's arm for a moment. “Then things will get back to normal.”

“I don't think things are going to get back to normal until that young man is gone,” he grumbled. Two furrows had formed between his bushy white eyebrows.

Jason Bates came out of the house then. Like his aunt, he was tall and lean, but that was where the similarities ended. Where Angie was fair, Jason was dark: deep-set dark eyes, spiked dark hair, navy shirt, black jeans. I noticed his eyes flick in our direction but he gave no other sign that he'd seen us. He jumped in Angie's blue Mini Cooper, backed out of the driveway and sped out of the court.

I glanced toward the backyard again. Elvis had put down the burden he had been carrying in his mouth and was looking back toward Tom's house, head tipped to one side, almost as if he, too, had questions about Jason Bates. He turned to look at me for a moment, then picked up whatever he'd caught in Tom's yard and disappeared over the rock wall.

Rose and I walked with Tom back to his house. Standing at the bottom of the driveway, I could see what a mess Jason had made when he'd mowed the strip of lawn between the two houses. The ground had been gouged in a couple of places, and in others the grass was more than a couple of inches high. “Don't worry,” I said. “It's grass. It'll grow.”

Tom didn't seem the slightest bit comforted by my words. I remembered feeling much the same way when my mother had said those same words—“It'll grow”—after I'd tried to cut my bangs with a pair of kitchen scissors when I was thirteen.

The old man had been mowing the small piece of lawn between his house and Angie's for years, even though technically it was her property. Angie had always thanked Tom for what she called the courtesy. I suspected the courtesy was more Angie's. Tom was finicky about his house and his property, and since the strip of grass was next to his driveway, I had a feeling he felt a bit of ownership, even if the lawn didn't actually belong to him.

A couple of days previous, Tom had gotten out his push mower, clippers and broom to begin his lawn-mowing routine. He always started with the section of grass between the two houses, working from left to right across the front of the house and then repeating the process in the back. I'd been hanging quilts on the backyard clothesline. It was a slow, awkward process one-handed. I'd just gotten the second quilt in place when I heard raised voices and the sound of Tom's little corgi Matilda's agitated barking. I rounded the side of my house in time to see Jason shake his fist at the old man and then shove the lawn mower out into the street before storming back into Angie's house.

I had hurried over to Tom. He was trembling, his face pale. The front door to his house was open, and I could see Matilda on her hind legs, paws on the screen, barking furiously. She was as protective of the old man as if she were a German shepherd or a Great Dane.

“What's wrong?” I'd asked, putting a hand on Tom's shoulder.

He'd turned to look at me and I noticed both of the old man's hands were squeezed into fists, the skin stretched tightly over his swollen, arthritic knuckles. “That . . . that punk accused me of being a thief!”

“I don't understand,” I said. “What does he think you took?” It had to be some sort of misunderstanding. Tom was honest to a fault. I didn't think he'd so much as crossed against the light even once in his entire life.

The old man had gestured to the area of lawn where he'd been about to begin mowing. “He said my cutting the grass was an attempt at a land grab. He called it encroaching on Angie's property.” He suddenly seemed aware that Matilda was still barking. He'd looked toward the front door and held out a hand, palm facing the ground. “Matilda, sit. Sit,” he'd called.

The little corgi stopped barking and sat down, but kept her nose pressed against the screen door.

Tom shifted his attention back to me again. “I'm not trying to steal any of Angie's property,” he'd said. “I would never do something like that. I was just trying to be a good neighbor.”

“I know that,” I'd said, “and so does Angie.”

I'd glanced over at the professor's house and found myself wishing, selfishly, that Jason Bates would go home. I knew, if anything, he'd probably be staying longer this visit. The day after Jason had arrived, Angie had caught her foot on a loose edge of carpet at the top of the stairs and fallen, dislocating her shoulder and breaking her collarbone. The broken clavicle had required surgery. She should have been home by now, but she'd developed an infection after the operation—a bug the doctors thought she'd brought home from her last dig in the Honduran rain forest—and was still in the hospital.

I was standing with my arms folded across my chest and my shoulders hunched, I realized, muscles tight from the memory of Tom's altercation with Jason Bates. I took a breath and let it out, feeling some of the tension let go.

Tom was still eyeing the mangled section of grass. I touched his arm. “I'm going to see Angie as soon as they'll let anyone who isn't family visit,” I said. “Once she's home, things will settle down.”

“I think you have a higher opinion of human nature than I do,” the old man said. “I hope you're right.”

Rose and I headed back to the house. She went inside to get her sweater and pack one of the tote bags she carried to work. Her bags reminded me of those little clown cars in the circus—the amount of things she could stuff inside seemed to defy the laws of physics sometimes.

I took a seat on the veranda in one of the two wicker chairs that my best friend, Jess, and I had found at a flea market. Jess, with her with her eye for space and orientation, had insisted both would fit in my SUV and she had, in fact, managed to wedge them both into the back of the vehicle. I'd cleaned the chairs and painted them a sea foam green. Jess, who was a talented seamstress, had made seat cushions from some navy canvas.

I slid down in the chair and propped my feet on the veranda railing, pulling the elastic from my dark hair and letting it fall loose to my shoulders. Jess was away in Vermont teaching a weeklong sewing workshop. I missed her. I remembered how she'd helped Tom fix the trellis on the side of his garden shed the previous fall, while Matilda, who generally disliked strangers, had followed her around the yard with a look of adoration on her furry face.

“I like Tom, he reminds me of Pops,” Jess had said, referring to her late grandfather.

I tried to imagine what would have happened if Jason had tried to bully the old man when Jess had been around. I couldn't help smiling. It wouldn't have gone well . . . for Jason.

Rose invited Elvis and me for supper that evening. Cooking wasn't my strong suit at the best of times; one-handed was beyond my limited skills. We moved out on to the veranda for dessert: Rose's berry cobbler for the two of us, and a chopped sardine for Elvis. He licked his whiskers and seemed to smile at her as she set the bowl on the railing in front of him.

I had just eaten the last spoonful of berries when Katie Burns came around the side of the house. She lived across the street from Tom with her husband, Matt, and their four-year-old, Molly.

“I just wanted to bring this back,” she said, holding out a blue bubble glass plate to Rose. “And say thank you again.”

“You're welcome, my dear.” Rose took the plate and set it on the floor next to her chair. It had held two dozen peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that Rose had made when the pregnant Katie had confided that she was craving peanut butter cups but they gave her heartburn. “Did they help with the cravings?”

Katie smiled and put a hand on her belly. “Yes. Thank you.” Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her bangs pushed to one side. With her glowing, creamy skin and bright eyes, she looked like an advertisement for having a baby. “Have either of you seen a pink and purple striped foam ball about this big?” she asked, holding her rounded hands about three inches apart.